I suspect it is less that Utena isn't into mind break and more that she is disgusted when a magical girl specifically is the one being broken by a villain. She puts magical girls on the highest pedestal, after all.

Of the Shio-chans, Pantano Pesca seems like a strong candidate for the most readily "converted" if that is how this might go again. Her stake in the cause does not seem to be as personal as the other two thus far, and her she doesn't set any new high water marks for the series with regard to her current disregard of the agency of others in the pursuit of her kink.

I am not really fond of the new group either, but I expect they and their goals are mostly a device for explicitly (perhaps in both senses...) revealing how power is gained by magical girls and their counterparts in this setting. In that sense, the progression of their arc probably does bring the story closer to the climax and/or completion.

are you kidding me she calls "pantano pesca"? bruh that´s mean "swamp fishing"

The japanese word for "swamp" is "numa," which is also slang for... well, it's sort of equivalent to the "rabbit hole" slang in English; an interest that you can fall into and be unable to escape. This character is a down bad, obsessively yuri shipping fujoshi.

Can anyone tell me what's up with Utena on the first page?

Is she recovering from being accidentally torched, or depressed because of Kiwi? She was certainly turned to charcoal in the previous chapter.

Just kinda spacing out, bored, not giving Korisu any attention hence why Korisu was sulking was my interpretation.

Pretty sure she's still ruminating the whole Kiwi issue hence rather distracted. Guessing Kiwi's equally preoccupied chasing her own tail over that business, ergo, Korisu's getting kind of neglected by her surrogate family ATM and duly unhappy and irritated, precocious enough to recognise they have some Emotionally Significant Shit going on though she may be.

Korisu's glance over at the robot toy while Utena is zoned out is a strong hint. That is the model kit that Kiwi made a while back, and usually uses when she plays dolls with Korisu.

Update: Yup, 20 was the last chapter of Torako. It looks like the author has a one-shot/pilot in the next issue of the main Young Animal magazine, so hopefully he starts a new series soon.

last edited at Jun 21, 2018 8:23PM

So it turns out that the magazine Torako runs in, Young Animal Arashi, has been cancelled. Torako isn't one of the series listed to continue in one of the company's other magazines, so it will likely be ending with Chapter 20. :(

last edited at Jun 13, 2018 6:49PM

So technically she only has 1 nickname and we don't know her name.

Her name was mentioned in chapter 2 as Udou Megumu, but nobody ever uses it.

The steadycam-POV horror film-like chapter seems absolutely hilarious XD

...i wouldn't look too far ahead in those raws. O_o;

Two questions:
1) If they were watching from the hallway, how did they expect him to sneak into the classroom?
2) How the heck did he sneak into the classroom??

We have not seen bullet's bullet in a while, does it still work?

We saw it just last chapter; it was sitting at her knees under the table.

Well, I expected her to end up in the same club as them, but I DID NOT expect it to be something like the "pet raising club"

It makes a bit of sense, though; aside from Takano they're all seem the sort who would end up in the "go home" club in a normal "cute girls doing cute things" manga... which is a nice way of saying that Enma and Suzume don't seem to have anything going for them other than being "quirky," and Bullet... um, yeah... She'd probably be gyaru, i guess? Kinda makes me think that them ending up as friends was either her or Takano's doing.

last edited at Mar 15, 2018 6:35PM

...Takano still tried to beat her up on first meeting at best over a by that point painfully obvious miscommunication and at worst for le shitz und giggles, though. Dunno 'bout you but where I come from that doesn't really fall within the criteria of "super nice"...

Well, i did say "apparently," since her kindness was commented on by Bullet, who also called her "really scary." She is at least kind to her friends, which is better than some delinquent manga bosses with regard to their subordinates. Aside from defaulting to violence (which seems to be assumed as a valid response to just about any situation in this school, such that nobody is shocked or surprised by it) she's probably relatively pleasant.

last edited at Feb 27, 2018 9:27AM

Valid point, though it'd be more appropriate if she wasn't by all appearances a "noncombatant" member of the group...

Mind, judging by ch4 Takano's the only one in the lot who's actually good at fighting lmao

Well, the other ones have their own deviant specialties; Enma at least looks dangerous, Suzume is apparently a chuuni cute mascot animal, and Bullet has public... masturbation... O_o;

Edit: given that Takano is apparently super nice and easily embarrassed, and even the boys went out of their way to negotiate a glimpse of the boob goddess, this lot seems like a particularly tame bunch of hoodlums.

last edited at Feb 24, 2018 10:50PM

I'm not even a native speaker, and I got the reference almost immediatly. Can't say I would've understood it if it was rotor from the beginning...

It might very well be the case that "Bullet" is a more easily recognizable reference for that kind of device outside of Japan. Also, if i remember correctly, Kanransha was primarily a Spanish-language scanlation group with just a few English projects. Name Brand dominance in the western world, vs. "so generic you can buy them out of a vending machine" in Japan?

Edit: Perhaps there is an expert here who can enlighten us? ^_^

last edited at Feb 20, 2018 5:21PM

Did Bullet's name just change to Rotor? It kinda makes sense given what her arm probably looks like.

Her nickname is "Rotor" in the original. The scan group for chapters 1 & 2 changed it to "Bullet," presumably because they thought the reference would be easier for English-speaking audiences to get (or they were tickled by the confusion made possible by using the the alternate, since it's a delinquent school.) The scan group for chapter 3 changed it back. Either way, it's a reference to a "bullet" rotor vibrator.

last edited at Feb 20, 2018 12:22PM

There are stretches where the slow progress feels a bit contrived, tho; normally in this sort of setup there would at least be some significant form of outside reinforcement propping up Akina's need to accept "normal life" and reject "otaku life," but in this case there really isn't much of that. The people Akina cares about are all friendly and open-minded, so it's really just Akina's own prejudices and the broad spectacle of socially awkward otaku (and presumed off-camera societal pressure) that keeps it going - and yet, her spastic flailing is so humorous to watch that it's easy to forget that she's mostly the only one being a jerk here. ^_^;

Edit: Also, "brain narcotics" could probably be translated as "endorphins," though i guess Mii-chan does use the colloquial rather than the loan-word. Incidentally, it's always nice to see Mii-chan flustered; the gap moe is real.

last edited at Feb 7, 2018 11:08PM

I really think that this could have been a really fun anime. :( You can pretty much go into a chapter without prior knowledge of the previous ones and still have a good time reading. Akina is also just really, really entertaining hahaha

At some point, one of her friends/classmates needs to tell her that she is by far the weirdest person they know.

B-But... she is not an otaku!!1

Indeed- her Batman-like ability to obsess about and plan for anything clearly makes her an otaku ninja.

last edited at Jan 16, 2018 8:51PM

I really think that this could have been a really fun anime. :( You can pretty much go into a chapter without prior knowledge of the previous ones and still have a good time reading. Akina is also just really, really entertaining hahaha

At some point, one of her friends/classmates needs to tell her that she is by far the weirdest person they know.

Man, that is deep.

And pretty dry. ^_^;

Fortunately, we have a have a healing yuri-tease chapter coming up, followed by several progression chapters (with a hefty side of yuri-teasing.) After 41 pretty much the entire rest of the manga leans into the character development.

last edited at Jan 7, 2018 3:49PM by Nezchan

Basically the cat was repeating Akina's phrase 書けない (kakenai), but written as 猫けない (nekokenai) (猫 being cat). Not an easy one to localize.

I'm pretty sure that kanji is 描く(egaku - to draw) and not 猫 (neko - cat) - you can tell because the second horizontal stroke in the radical crosses the vertical stroke. It's even conjugated correctly for the verb egaku. If it's meant to be a pun, then it really is a hard one to localize, as it would be entirely visual based on the one-radical difference between the kanji.

Edit: Or etymological wordplay based, since "egaku" (to draw) is a combination of "e" (picture) and "kaku" (write,) and the latter was what Akina was saying. Oy...

last edited at Jan 7, 2018 1:58PM

That pun at the end, I wonder what it literally was in Japanese.

In the omake page? As far as I can tell there isn't one; unless I'm missing something it just says "can't draw" rather than "can't write."

Noooo 46 chapters is not enough... We need to see more :<

Thank you for the translations <3 It's christmas everywhere!

Hmm... actually, flipping through the 9th volume, it appears that while there are only 46 numbered chapters, there is a full length unnumbered "final" chapter after 46, making the total count 47 (excluding omakes.) Chapter 42 is the last one in volume 8.

Edit: Speaking of omakes, there is a "comparison" illustration at the end of vol. 3 which answers the question about Akina's chest (even if the art isn't always consistent, with this chapter's title card being one of the biggest offenders in that regard.)

last edited at Jan 6, 2018 1:52AM

Incidentally, the author has a pilot chapter of a new story in Comic Meteor (the same web serial as Shinozaki) as of 12/20: "Bandai Kaname wa Asobitai." It seems to be a standard romcom setup, with a series widget of "playing with nostalgic toys;" no yuri in evidence yet, though the only two characters we've met thus far are the male and female leads. There's a survey at the end of it for readers to express whether or not they'd like to see more of it.